Following a jam-packed Nintendo Direct on Friday, we now have a much better idea of what the back half of Nintendo Switch 2’s first year will entail. While we knew what was on deck for the rest of 2025, the showcase filled in a few more gaps by revealing new entries in the Yoshi, Mario Tennis, and Fire Emblem series coming in 2026. Along with some previously announced games like Splatoon Raiders, those will likely carry us to the console’s one-year anniversary next June.
Now that we can nearly see the full picture, the software lineup comes as a bit of a surprise. Rather than filling the maiden year up with heavy hitters like mainline Mario and Zelda games, as Nintendo did with the Switch in 2017, we’re getting more spinoffs, experiments, and left-field gambles than you might expect this early in a console’s life. That paints a very different picture of Nintendo than the one we saw coming off the Wii U’s failure, but it’s not an entirely alien move in the company’s history either. When it comes to Nintendo, success always opens the door for risk-taking — and we sure do have a lot of risks on the horizon.
While there are some major games slotted in the Switch 2’s first year (and it didn’t get much bigger than Mario Kart World as far as launch games go), there are several zigs where you’d expect to see zags. Rather than getting a new 3D Mario game out the gate, we got a total swerve with Donkey Kong Bananza instead. Our only known Zelda game right now is Musou spinoff Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment. Masahiro Sakurai has spent his last few years creating a sequel to the critically panned Kirby Air Ride instead of toiling away on a new Super Smash Bros. game. Up is down and black is white.
Splatoon 4? How about a mysterious spinoff instead? Animal Crossing? Nope, you’re getting a life sim about a Ditto disguising itself as a noodle-armed human. Somewhere in the middle of all that is Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream and Rhythm Heaven Groove, two incredibly niche Switch games that will be available on Switch 2 next year. There are still some major players in the mix, like Pokémon Legends: Z-A and Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave, but very few games on the list are direct sequels to any of the Switch’s top sellers aside from Mario Kart World.
Even Nintendo’s retro game rollout on Switch Online is surprising thus far, with Chibi-Robo making its way to the service before Super Mario Sunshine or Super Smash Bros. Melee. (Though after The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker.) The cherry on top of this is the fact that Virtual Boy games are now coming to Switch Online too, alongside a $100 recreation of Nintendo’s most infamous system. If you need a tangible symbol for how out there Nintendo is willing to get in Switch 2’s first year, there you have it.
It’s surprising coming off the original Switch’s historic first year, but it’s not entirely unlike Nintendo. The GameCube famously swerved early in its life with releases like Luigi’s Mansion, Wave Race, Pikmin, Star Fox Adventure, and Animal Crossing. (Even then, it had Super Mario Sunshine by the following summer.) When following up the incredibly popular Nintendo DS, we got Nintendogs and Pilotwings Resort to usher in the 3DS. (But again, Super Mario 3D Land wasn’t far behind.) The more confident Nintendo feels that its hardware will sell, the more experimental the launch lineups tend to get.
And there was good reason for Nintendo to feel confident heading into Switch 2’s launch. Its predecessor was a commercial behemoth that was giving just about every long-running Nintendo series its best sales figures of all time. The fact that we saw left-field revivals like Famicom Detective Club and Endless Ocean start to pop up with frequency in the console’s last few spotlight years signals that Nintendo believes it can sell a ham sandwich right now. When you’re on top, you can afford to get weird.
So who needs a 3D Mario game or brand-new Zelda right away? The absence of those games didn’t stop the Switch 2 from becoming the fastest-selling video game console of all time. Nintendo is in a position where it can now hang on to those tentpoles and time them more strategically, say, to align with a big movie release in its new Hollywood era. After all, as Shigeru Miyamoto said during Friday’s Nintendo Direct, the “main event” of Super Mario Bros. 40th anniversary isn’t a new Mario game at all: It’s The Super Mario Galaxy Movie. Maybe that’s the real system seller that Nintendo cares about right now.
